Neutral Tax Hike for Shared Services

The taxes for the three combined areas shared by the City of Armstrong and the Township of Spallumcheen will actually be down this year.

The Parks and Rec budget has dropped $37-thousand thanks to added revenue, while the Fire Department is down some $2-thousand.

Only the cemetery budget has increased 3% or just under $5-thousand dollars.

Armstrong Mayor Chris Pieper says it likely means no increase at all.

“That’s good news going ahead on these particular elements of our budget . There’s still everything else involved in our budget going forward, so we’ll see where it all ends up at the end of the day.”

Pieper says he doesn’t expect any increases even with Parks and Rec undertaking a new project.

“Parks and Rec have a good initiative going forward this year and next year in that they are doing a complete assessment of the fair grounds and an assessment of their programs so that we know where we are going in the long term.”

Pieper says the Parks review will be similar to one done that upgraded the fire department in past and resulted in a full-time fire chief hired and fire hall upgrades.

“Building renovations just set us up for the next 25 years. The staffing and so forth we are working on that for the fire department and we are pretty happy with the way the fire program is going.”

Armstrong’s 2017 budget won’t be introduced though until early March. Spallumcheen is hoping to keep any tax increases to 2% or lower this year